


Without Mercy

by jehannaford



Category: Ghost (Sweden Band), Papa Emeritus III - Fandom, emeritus, papa - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:31:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehannaford/pseuds/jehannaford
Summary: A loose re-working of the story from the Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. A young witch finds her way to an otherworldly sabbat and does not return unscathed.





	Without Mercy

“O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?  
Return, and we return; keep faith, and so will we.”  
\--The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night

I stood at the crossroads on Walpurgisnacht, and it was there I opened the door. I hadn’t been at all sure that the spell I tried would work. Would the pavement on the crossroads interfere? Was the grimoire I was using sufficiently complete? When the air split in two, revealing the other world beyond, I almost didn’t believe it myself. I knew only the half-remembered legends of what awaited me there, instructions passed down from mother to daughter since time out of memory. But I am a witch of this land, and this is my inheritance.  


The gateway gave upon a dark wood, the trees thick with impossible age, branches bare. No light pierced that canopy—it was full dark, the moon new. All was still, not even a breeze to stir the undergrowth. The only path forward was a winding, grassy track between the trees. I pressed on cautiously, my only guide the dim witchlight conjured in my hand.  


How long I wandered in that wood I cannot know. The trees seemed to move, the path shifted in the dark. In time, it entered a small clearing. That was where he found me.  


He came to me with an easy grace, his every move the mark of a predator. Pale, slender, raven-haired, one eye a warm green, the other ice-white and touched with madness. This could only be some Unseelie noble or greater demon; no lesser creature could have had such glamour. He wore a sleek suit in black and white, old-fashioned, like a silent film star’s, and a death mask painted over his face. It gave him the look of a gothic harlequin, dark hollowed eyes, upper lip painted black, following the perfect lines of his mouth.  


I have never in all my life seen a man more beautiful.  


He smiled at me. “A witch? Here? We’ve not seen one of your kind in many a day.” His voice was softly accented, with the echo of some southern country.  
I knelt to him. “Yes, lord. My line had feared the way forgotten all these years, but I have found the door.”  
He gestured for me to rise. “Come child. Join the court tonight. It is your birthright.”  
“Yes, lord.”  
His grin was feral. “No, child. I am no lord. Not tonight, not to you. You must call me Papa.”  
They say that all witches are the devil’s children through Lillith, the Great Mother. I trembled then, for I knew that I was in the Presence. This was the Dark Man, the leader of the Sabbat rites, the avatar of Satan if not the devil himself. He was my high priest, I owed him all.  


I don’t remember how he led me to the place of the sabbat. I only remember his horde of nameless elemental ghouls, masked, inscrutable, silent. I remember fairy lights, a fast-whirling dance, and the music. It haunts me even now.  
I remember his arms around me, the heat of his body, the scent of his skin; like spice with something darker underneath, an animal musk. I remember the single kiss he gave me, the taste of his mouth.  
Have you ever committed a terrible sin, known your sin, and cherished it nonetheless because you had enacted your deepest desire?  
That was the kiss. That was the taste of him.

Later, I woke near the crossroads where I’d begun. How much time had passed, I could not say. If ever there were ways for witches to come and go from the Otherworld in safety, that wisdom has been forgotten, for I left a piece of myself in that place.  
They found me wandering alone, weeks later, faded and feverish, as you see. I knew nothing but the music, still and forever in my soul. Time was an agony. I could not rest; I lived in longing. I looked for him in every face I saw, reached for him alone in the night. My arms ached with emptiness for the lack of his embrace, my skin burned for the want of his touch. He filled my mind’s eye wholly, yet I never saw him more.  
They tell me that it’s much too late, that I cannot last the night. Now I have told you all my story, and I am content.  
No, dear one, do not call the priest. Don’t you see? I must die unshriven, for unless my soul can pass the gates of hell, I will never see him again.


End file.
